The Land of Broken Roads

After a good long nap, the dryads fed him too much sap, but he told himself too much food was better than not enough. All he had to do was remember crossing that grassy plain with nothing to eat or drink, and the sap went down easy.

Once they were satisfied that he’d eaten enough, Callius led him outside to where the rest were gathered in front of his house. The dryad had a lightness in his step that Dirt was certain he had learned elsewhere, like he was ready to break into a run or dance at any moment.

Dawn grinned widely in a way that made her look much more like a real girl than usual. She ran out before he did, nudging her way in front of him near the door.

“Hey!” he shouted, laughter in his voice. He followed them outside, listening to their giggling. Home followed after him, calmer and more dignified but not exactly slow.

Callius turned and said, “Friend Dirt, we are most eager to play. We have adopted a game we play ourselves, in our way of perceiving. There is no trick here, or anything to cause you distress. Just a game. Are you going to join us?”

“Of course! I’ve never played a game,” said Dirt. He was glad Callius clarified it wouldn’t be something awful again, because he’d been about to ask.

“We will all conceal ourselves beneath the ferns, and you will attempt to find us. When you have found one, that one will help you, and so with the next until all are found. Then you will hide, and we will attempt to find you,” said Callius, almost edging away to go start already.

“Oh,” said Dirt. “That sounds way simpler than I was expecting. And a lot less dangerous. Okay. Do I need to give you time to hide first or anything? How far will you go?”

“We will assign a triangle between these three trees, and remain inside it,” said Callius, pointing at Home and the two nearest trees. “It will not matter if you watch. Good luck.”

With that, the dryads turned as one and melted into the ferns. Only a small number of fronds moved as they passed, and then nothing. Total silence, like when he’d first awoken here. Empty, majestic grandeur in every direction, and not so much as a twitching frond. No, that wasn’t quite true. Some moved slightly and only briefly, as if they’d leaned on purpose to let a dryad pass. Which, he admitted, was entirely possible.

Well, that wasn’t fair. How did they do that? They were his size, and he wasn’t sure he could do it even if he went really slowly.

Dirt grinned, filling with excitement. This was going to be hard! It was several hundred paces to the next tree, which left a massive amount of area to search. They’d probably move around to avoid him, too.

He wouldn’t be able to find them from their minds, since their minds were far away in their trees. He couldn’t smell them or hear like Socks could. He could gather mana, but how would that even help? Maybe run faster, but to where?

He just had to find one dryad and watch them, and see how they found each other. He could do that. Dirt shouted, “Here I come!” at the top of his lungs. He started pushing through the ferns, and his eyes darted across the landscape looking for any motion at all.

As he went, he pushed ferns aside from time to time to check for footprints. Near his house there were too many for it to be useful, but as he got farther out there were fewer and fewer until there were none. From there he went back and forth in expanding arcs until he found his first trail.

Dirt hastened anew in that direction, slowing every couple paces just to check and make sure he was still going the right way.

The dryad almost lost him when she doubled back on his trail, but he just barely caught a glimpse of gray bark-skin and dove in.

“Got you!” he yelled, before it was actually true. But he only had to scramble a bit farther before he grabbed her ankle, and that was that. She was caught.

She stood and wiped a bit of black earth off her knees and smiled prettily. Her green hair was curly and a bit paler than the rest. He didn’t recognize her.

“Let us quickly find the others,” she said.

Dirt nodded. “Let’s go!”

The ferns really did bend out of the way when she walked. She only had to brush a fingertip against them, and they would somehow know. Dirt glanced at the ferns’ minds, trying to find the right one, but it wasn’t easy, and he didn’t want to spend too long standing around.

Dirt found the next dryad, another one he didn’t recognize, but that was the last one he found before their turn was over. All the rest were found by each other, and each time it happened they shouted, “Got you!” just as he had done.

After about half had been found, it didn’t really matter if he kept searching, so he spent more time trying to watch the minds of the ferns to see what the dryads were doing. Near the end of their turn, there were so many dryads walking around that Dirt finally got a good look.

It was one bundle of information, nearly the same one each time. The dryads spoke to the ferns like they did to each other, except much simpler. They needed physical contact, but that was enough to convey their thoughts. Dirt supposed it wasn’t too different from hearing, since you had to be close enough to hear. They just used fingers or roots instead of ears and mouths.

He did his best to memorize the word they shared as the ferns understood it. He was sure he could use it.

Once the game was over, they all gathered back at his house, laughing and chatting among themselves. Dirt supposed this must be how they acted when they played tree games amongst themselves, or something close to this and they were translating it for him. Either way it made quite a racket, and something about hearing so many human voices did him well, deep inside.

Then it was his turn. He sprinted into the ferns, ignoring the weariness that remained in his legs. He needed to get as far as possible before they started after him. After about fifty paces he ducked down and started crawling in a different direction, as fast as he could. He did his best to avoid the ferns, but it just wasn’t possible to avoid them all. They grew too close together.

Dirt had no idea what senses they would use to find him. Could they smell as well as Socks? Or hear? If so, this game would be short.

He carefully lay down, not touching any ferns, and tried to stop breathing so heavily after his run. Then he waited, listening carefully for anyone to get close.

His heart hadn’t even slowed back down after the run before Home found him. He didn’t hear her until she was too close, and before he knew it, she’d caught him.

“Already? How did you find me? You walked right to me!” Dirt said, trying not to sound annoyed.

“You damage the ferns as you go. Finding you is simple. If you wish to pass in peace, harm nothing, and do not trample the young and tender shoots,” she said, holding out her hand to lift him from the ground.

“I don’t think I damaged the ferns much, though. I was being careful to go between them.”

“Here,” said Home, pointing at a frond bent halfway up. “And here.” She pointed at a place where he’d stepped on one and broken off some of the little leaves, pushing them into the dirt.

“But that’s so small. How did you notice it?”

“It’s not small to the fern, dear Dirt,” said Home.

He considered that for a moment. “Are you going to tell me not to hurt any plants at all, since you’re a tree?”

“No, all things will do as they must to be what they are. You must harm to exist because your food is things which have life. We eat air and soil and light, and do not know pain. These ferns are too small and temporary to fear death. They live with us in the perceptions of magic and dream and rejoice until they die. But you should take care to understand what you want, dear Dirt, if you wish to achieve it.”

Dirt nodded. “I’ll be more careful.”

“As you choose, friend Dirt,” said Home. “I have more fun hiding than seeking, so you may freely continue to be bad at hiding, and I will not mind.”

He chuckled. “Well, tell everyone to hide, I guess. Let’s get started.”

Home smiled in her serene, motherly way, but a hint of mischief showed in her eyes. She backed away so smoothly he wasn’t sure her feet were moving. She ducked down under the ferns about twenty paces away from him, and that was that. The game was on.

In the next round, Dirt paid more attention to the minds of the ferns, trying to watch for disturbances that might give away a dryad. It wasn’t easy, though, because there were so many around, and they were small. The lights of their minds took significant mental focus to peer into, and besides that, he didn’t know which mind-light went with which fern.

It started wearing him out, so he got more selective about when and where he looked. The trick, he quickly learned, was to touch a fern himself and see which mind reacted.

He found his first dryad more slowly than the first round, but he found four more before they started finding each other too quickly for him to keep up.

When it was his turn to hide again, he sprinted out as before, but this time instead of trying to crawl away quickly, he ducked down and touched a few ferns, taking careful note of exactly how they reacted in their minds. The specific sensation it caused them and their thoughts about it. Once he was sure he had it memorized, he sent that thought to all the ferns, and confused them terribly.

He crawled only a short distance then, as carefully as he could to not disturb anything. Once he found a spot he could lie down in without touching any ferns, he curled up and waited, trying to breathe as quietly as possible.

Every so often, he sent the sensation to a different group of ferns to make them think he’d touched them. He had no idea where they were, but he tried to find the dimmer ones and speak to several at once.

Dirt waited. And waited. Dryads walked nearby, but never close enough to come across him. He heard them swishing through the ferns, which he was sure they were doing on purpose.

The dryads had their own new tricks, however. Once they realized they weren’t going to find him like before, they sent out a question that passed through the mind of every single fern. He paid close attention and determined it had two parts—one, something similar to asking them to bend out of the way or their reaction to being touched, and two, a particular arrangement, or sensation, or idea, that he figured signified him. A fern wouldn’t know who he was, though, so maybe it was something like, “Hey, did you get touched by skin?”

He wasn’t touching any ferns, though, so it didn’t work. But then they did something he never expected and made a strong gust of wind blow through. It had to be them that caused it—there was no other explanation. A strong gust of wind just happened to blow past, right then? The first time the air had moved at all the whole time he’d been in the forest?

Sure enough, the wind pushed the ferns far enough over to touch him, and they found him shortly after.

They played two more rounds after that, and each one was more ridiculous than the last. When it was his turn, he figured out how to modify the question to ask about bark-skin, not human skin, and found twenty of them right away. On their turn, they stood two paces apart from each other to make a huge line and simply flushed him out.

On their next turn they passed by the ferns without leaving a trace, making him wonder if they’d just sunk into the dirt. It turned out they had, or something close to that. He followed a trail of footprints that disappeared midstride, leaving him clueless. But when he ducked down to try to figure out what happened, he spotted gray bark-skin a few paces away through the fern stems, or he might never have found them.

On their next turn, they filled the area with tiny tree roots, and no sooner did one touch him than it sucked him through, just like when they brought him from Socks’s den, but far less painfully because the distance was short.

“Okay, this is getting silly,” said Dirt as he stood back up. Half the dryads were chuckling to each other, whispering back and forth and looking like they were having a great time.

Callius said, “It is escalating beyond what we intended. Were you having fun?”

“Oh, yes, definitely. I just don’t know where we go from there,” said Dirt, laughter in his voice.

“Just when we think we understand your capabilities, you increase them,” said Callius. “What are we supposed to do?”

“I was just thinking the same thing about you!” said Dirt, and several of the nearby dryads laughed. It wasn’t even that funny, but maybe they were picking up on his body language.

Home said, “Perhaps it is time to eat again. Will you come, dear Dirt?” She held her hand out for him to take.

He hesitated, and Dawn patted him on the back and said, “Don’t look like that. Come, you must eat whether you want to or not, for your benefit.”

“Was it that obvious?”

“No, but we are learning. Come, Dirt. Come, and if you eat well, then we will explain the shape of reality. You should know these things in preparation for tomorrow, when we begin instructing you in the use of magic.”

Callius said, “We will tell you of magic, and of mind.”

Home added, “Of spirit, of dream, and of that which lies beneath all things.”

“Well,” said Dirt, taking Home’s hand, “I guess I can’t turn that down.”